Tightening the grip: China's media campaign

As Beijing announces 'Cultural Development Guidelines', can the state control what society wants to see?

Should the state control what society wants to see? The Chinese government seems to think so, with a flurry of media rules dubbed 'Cultural Development Guidelines'.

Most recently, advertising has been banned during TV dramas in an attempt to keep viewers' eyes from wandering elsewhere. Before that, the government announced the end of a crowd pleaser of a talent show.

And on the internet, journalists have been told they cannot report news stories found online or via phone networks without first getting official verification.

"The government is not able to full[y] control who has a voice to speak to the public and what kind of information the public can have access to. People being engaged in this discussion, they might just find different ways, or they discuss things in a different format, or maybe even using a different kind of language because on the Chinese internet, there are also all kinds of spoofs, parodies and euphemisms, all kinds of ways to circumvent the filtering and the censoring."

Bingchun Meng, a media lecturer at LSA

Source:Al Jazeera

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